The Tyranny of Ideas

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I’m an idea man. I come up with ideas all the time. It’s like living in a brainstorm. There’s no way I could ever execute even half the things I come up with. And so they become unwanted distractions. My super power becomes my kryptonite.

Have you ever had a bad idea? Our brains are wired for self-preservation. So when ideas surface, I’d say there’s a good chance they’re at least worth considering–and that’s exactly what we do. We let our minds drift away from the here and now to envision what could be. If we’re willing to take action.

We put a lot of effort into the ideas we want to make reality. When a shiny new idea comes along, we’re lucky if it only distracts us long enough to get it out of our heads for future reference. It’s only delayed us a few moments. Every once in awhile, though, an idea pops up that shines like a diamond.

Everything grinds to a halt. Gears are shifted. Energy is redirected to processing this new idea. It could be the better mousetrap. Or it could just be a trap. When it comes to ideas, taking action–starting–is critical. But so is follow-through.

While I don’t know how much I agree with such a hard-nosed perspective of shutting out new stuff, I also realize my perspective is perhaps influenced by my taking your words in that post literally, and know that even the hardest walls have cracks–and new ideas will get through.

Key to it all, I guess, is understanding our WHYs so we can better evaluate and frame the things we discover in our parallel explorations.